Byte order mark screws up file reading in Java

I'm trying to read CSV files using Java. Some of the fil开发者_C百科es may have a byte order mark in the beginning, but not all. When present, the byte order gets read along with the rest of the first line, thus causing problems with string compares.

Is there an easy way to skip the byte order mark when it is present?

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EDIT: I've made a proper release on GitHub: https://github.com/gpakosz/UnicodeBOMInputStream

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Here is a class I coded a while ago, I just edited the package name before pasting. Nothing special, it is quite similar to solutions posted in SUN's bug database. Incorporate it in your code and you're fine.

/* ____________________________________________________________________________
 * 
 * File:    UnicodeBOMInputStream.java
 * Author:  Gregory Pakosz.
 * Date:    02 - November - 2005    
 * ____________________________________________________________________________
 */
package com.stackoverflow.answer;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.PushbackInputStream;

/**
 * The <code>UnicodeBOMInputStream</code> class wraps any
 * <code>InputStream</code> and detects the presence of any Unicode BOM
 * (Byte Order Mark) at its beginning, as defined by
 * <a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3629.html">RFC 3629 - UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646</a>
 * 
 * <p>The
 * <a href="http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/utf_bom.html">Unicode FAQ</a>
 * defines 5 types of BOMs:<ul>
 * <li><pre>00 00 FE FF  = UTF-32, big-endian</pre></li>
 * <li><pre>FF FE 00 00  = UTF-32, little-endian</pre></li>
 * <li><pre>FE FF        = UTF-16, big-endian</pre></li>
 * <li><pre>FF FE        = UTF-16, little-endian</pre></li>
 * <li><pre>EF BB BF     = UTF-8</pre></li>
 * </ul></p>
 * 
 * <p>Use the {@link #getBOM()} method to know whether a BOM has been detected
 * or not.
 * </p>
 * <p>Use the {@link #skipBOM()} method to remove the detected BOM from the
 * wrapped <code>InputStream</code> object.</p>
 */
public class UnicodeBOMInputStream extends InputStream
{
  /**
   * Type safe enumeration class that describes the different types of Unicode
   * BOMs.
   */
  public static final class BOM
  {
    /**
     * NONE.
     */
    public static final BOM NONE = new BOM(new byte[]{},"NONE");

    /**
     * UTF-8 BOM (EF BB BF).
     */
    public static final BOM UTF_8 = new BOM(new byte[]{(byte)0xEF,
                                                       (byte)0xBB,
                                                       (byte)0xBF},
                                            "UTF-8");

    /**
     * UTF-16, little-endian (FF FE).
     */
    public static final BOM UTF_16_LE = new BOM(new byte[]{ (byte)0xFF,
                                                            (byte)0xFE},
                                                "UTF-16 little-endian");

    /**
     * UTF-16, big-endian (FE FF).
     */
    public static final BOM UTF_16_BE = new BOM(new byte[]{ (byte)0xFE,
                                                            (byte)0xFF},
                                                "UTF-16 big-endian");

    /**
     * UTF-32, little-endian (FF FE 00 00).
     */
    public static final BOM UTF_32_LE = new BOM(new byte[]{ (byte)0xFF,
                                                            (byte)0xFE,
                                                            (byte)0x00,
                                                            (byte)0x00},
                                                "UTF-32 little-endian");

    /**
     * UTF-32, big-endian (00 00 FE FF).
     */
    public static final BOM UTF_32_BE = new BOM(new byte[]{ (byte)0x00,
                                                            (byte)0x00,
                                                            (byte)0xFE,
                                                            (byte)0xFF},
                                                "UTF-32 big-endian");

    /**
     * Returns a <code>String</code> representation of this <code>BOM</code>
     * value.
     */
    public final String toString()
    {
      return description;
    }

    /**
     * Returns the bytes corresponding to this <code>BOM</code> value.
     */
    public final byte[] getBytes()
    {
      final int     length = bytes.length;
      final byte[]  result = new byte[length];

      // Make a defensive copy
      System.arraycopy(bytes,0,result,0,length);

      return result;
    }

    private BOM(final byte bom[], final String description)
    {
      assert(bom != null)               : "invalid BOM: null is not allowed";
      assert(description != null)       : "invalid description: null is not allowed";
      assert(description.length() != 0) : "invalid description: empty string is not allowed";

      this.bytes          = bom;
      this.description  = description;
    }

            final byte    bytes[];
    private final String  description;

  } // BOM

  /**
   * Constructs a new <code>UnicodeBOMInputStream</code> that wraps the
   * specified <code>InputStream</code>.
   * 
   * @param inputStream an <code>InputStream</code>.
   * 
   * @throws NullPointerException when <code>inputStream</code> is
   * <code>null</code>.
   * @throws IOException on reading from the specified <code>InputStream</code>
   * when trying to detect the Unicode BOM.
   */
  public UnicodeBOMInputStream(final InputStream inputStream) throws  NullPointerException,
                                                                      IOException

  {
    if (inputStream == null)
      throw new NullPointerException("invalid input stream: null is not allowed");

    in = new PushbackInputStream(inputStream,4);

    final byte  bom[] = new byte[4];
    final int   read  = in.read(bom);

    switch(read)
    {
      case 4:
        if ((bom[0] == (byte)0xFF) &&
            (bom[1] == (byte)0xFE) &&
            (bom[2] == (byte)0x00) &&
            (bom[3] == (byte)0x00))
        {
          this.bom = BOM.UTF_32_LE;
          break;
        }
        else
        if ((bom[0] == (byte)0x00) &&
            (bom[1] == (byte)0x00) &&
            (bom[2] == (byte)0xFE) &&
            (bom[3] == (byte)0xFF))
        {
          this.bom = BOM.UTF_32_BE;
          break;
        }

      case 3:
        if ((bom[0] == (byte)0xEF) &&
            (bom[1] == (byte)0xBB) &&
            (bom[2] == (byte)0xBF))
        {
          this.bom = BOM.UTF_8;
          break;
        }

      case 2:
        if ((bom[0] == (byte)0xFF) &&
            (bom[1] == (byte)0xFE))
        {
          this.bom = BOM.UTF_16_LE;
          break;
        }
        else
        if ((bom[0] == (byte)0xFE) &&
            (bom[1] == (byte)0xFF))
        {
          this.bom = BOM.UTF_16_BE;
          break;
        }

      default:
        this.bom = BOM.NONE;
        break;
    }

    if (read > 0)
      in.unread(bom,0,read);
  }

  /**
   * Returns the <code>BOM</code> that was detected in the wrapped
   * <code>InputStream</code> object.
   * 
   * @return a <code>BOM</code> value.
   */
  public final BOM getBOM()
  {
    // BOM type is immutable.
    return bom;
  }

  /**
   * Skips the <code>BOM</code> that was found in the wrapped
   * <code>InputStream</code> object.
   * 
   * @return this <code>UnicodeBOMInputStream</code>.
   * 
   * @throws IOException when trying to skip the BOM from the wrapped
   * <code>InputStream</code> object.
   */
  public final synchronized UnicodeBOMInputStream skipBOM() throws IOException
  {
    if (!skipped)
    {
      in.skip(bom.bytes.length);
      skipped = true;
    }
    return this;
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   */
  public int read() throws IOException
  {
    return in.read();
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   */
  public int read(final byte b[]) throws  IOException,
                                          NullPointerException
  {
    return in.read(b,0,b.length);
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   */
  public int read(final byte b[],
                  final int off,
                  final int len) throws IOException,
                                        NullPointerException
  {
    return in.read(b,off,len);
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   */
  public long skip(final long n) throws IOException
  {
    return in.skip(n);
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   */
  public int available() throws IOException
  {
    return in.available();
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   */
  public void close() throws IOException
  {
    in.close();
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   */
  public synchronized void mark(final int readlimit)
  {
    in.mark(readlimit);
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   */
  public synchronized void reset() throws IOException
  {
    in.reset();
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   */
  public boolean markSupported() 
  {
    return in.markSupported();
  }

  private final PushbackInputStream in;
  private final BOM                 bom;
  private       boolean             skipped = false;

} // UnicodeBOMInputStream

And you're using it this way:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

public final class UnicodeBOMInputStreamUsage
{
  public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception
  {
    FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("test/offending_bom.txt");
    UnicodeBOMInputStream ubis = new UnicodeBOMInputStream(fis);

    System.out.println("detected BOM: " + ubis.getBOM());

    System.out.print("Reading the content of the file without skipping the BOM: ");
    InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(ubis);
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);

    System.out.println(br.readLine());

    br.close();
    isr.close();
    ubis.close();
    fis.close();

    fis = new FileInputStream("test/offending_bom.txt");
    ubis = new UnicodeBOMInputStream(fis);
    isr = new InputStreamReader(ubis);
    br = new BufferedReader(isr);

    ubis.skipBOM();

    System.out.print("Reading the content of the file after skipping the BOM: ");
    System.out.println(br.readLine());

    br.close();
    isr.close();
    ubis.close();
    fis.close();
  }

} // UnicodeBOMInputStreamUsage

---

The Apache Commons IO library has an InputStream that can detect and discard BOMs: BOMInputStream (javadoc):

BOMInputStream bomIn = new BOMInputStream(in);
int firstNonBOMByte = bomIn.read(); // Skips BOM
if (bomIn.hasBOM()) {
    // has a UTF-8 BOM
}

If you also need to detect different encodings, it can also distinguish among various different byte-order marks, e.g. UTF-8 vs. UTF-16 big + little endian - details at the doc link above. You can then use the detected ByteOrderMark to choose a Charset to decode the stream. (There's probably a more streamlined way to do this if you need all of this functionality - maybe the UnicodeReader in BalusC's answer?). Note that, in general, there's not a very good way to detect what encoding some bytes are in, but if the stream starts with a BOM, apparently this can be helpful.

Edit: If you need to detect the BOM in UTF-16, UTF-32, etc, then the constructor should be:

new BOMInputStream(is, ByteOrderMark.UTF_8, ByteOrderMark.UTF_16BE,
        ByteOrderMark.UTF_16LE, ByteOrderMark.UTF_32BE, ByteOrderMark.UTF_32LE)

Upvote @martin-charlesworth's comment :)

---

More simple solution:

public class BOMSkipper
{
    public static void skip(Reader reader) throws IOException
    {
        reader.mark(1);
        char[] possibleBOM = new char[1];
        reader.read(possibleBOM);

        if (possibleBOM[0] != '\ufeff')
        {
            reader.reset();
        }
    }
}

Usage sample:

BufferedReader input = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(file), fileExpectedCharset));
BOMSkipper.skip(input);
//Now UTF prefix not present:
input.readLine();
...

It works with all 5 UTF encodings!

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Google Data API has an UnicodeReader which automagically detects the encoding.

You can use it instead of InputStreamReader. Here's an -slightly compactized- extract of its source which is pretty straightforward:

public class UnicodeReader extends Reader {
    private static final int BOM_SIZE = 4;
    private final InputStreamReader reader;

    /**
     * Construct UnicodeReader
     * @param in Input stream.
     * @param defaultEncoding Default encoding to be used if BOM is not found,
     * or <code>null</code> to use system default encoding.
     * @throws IOException If an I/O error occurs.
     */
    public UnicodeReader(InputStream in, String defaultEncoding) throws IOException {
        byte bom[] = new byte[BOM_SIZE];
        String encoding;
        int unread;
        PushbackInputStream pushbackStream = new PushbackInputStream(in, BOM_SIZE);
        int n = pushbackStream.read(bom, 0, bom.length);

        // Read ahead four bytes and check for BOM marks.
        if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0xEF) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0xBB) && (bom[2] == (byte) 0xBF)) {
            encoding = "UTF-8";
            unread = n - 3;
        } else if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0xFE) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0xFF)) {
            encoding = "UTF-16BE";
            unread = n - 2;
        } else if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0xFF) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0xFE)) {
            encoding = "UTF-16LE";
            unread = n - 2;
        } else if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0x00) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0x00) && (bom[2] == (byte) 0xFE) && (bom[3] == (byte) 0xFF)) {
            encoding = "UTF-32BE";
            unread = n - 4;
        } else if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0xFF) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0xFE) && (bom[2] == (byte) 0x00) && (bom[3] == (byte) 0x00)) {
            encoding = "UTF-32LE";
            unread = n - 4;
        } else {
            encoding = defaultEncoding;
            unread = n;
        }

        // Unread bytes if necessary and skip BOM marks.
        if (unread > 0) {
            pushbackStream.unread(bom, (n - unread), unread);
        } else if (unread < -1) {
            pushbackStream.unread(bom, 0, 0);
        }

        // Use given encoding.
        if (encoding == null) {
            reader = new InputStreamReader(pushbackStream);
        } else {
            reader = new InputStreamReader(pushbackStream, encoding);
        }
    }

    public String getEncoding() {
        return reader.getEncoding();
    }

    public int read(char[] cbuf, int off, int len) throws IOException {
        return reader.read(cbuf, off, len);
    }

    public void close() throws IOException {
        reader.close();
    }
}

---

The Apache Commons IO Library's BOMInputStream has already been mentioned by @rescdsk, but I did not see it mention how to get an InputStream without the BOM.

Here's how I did it in Scala.

 import java.io._
 val file = new File(path_to_xml_file_with_BOM)
 val fileInpStream = new FileInputStream(file)   
 val bomIn = new BOMInputStream(fileInpStream, 
         false); // false means don't include BOM

---

To simply remove the BOM characters from your file, I recomend using Apache Common IO

public BOMInputStream(InputStream delegate,
              boolean include)
Constructs a new BOM InputStream that detects a a ByteOrderMark.UTF_8 and optionally includes it.
Parameters:
delegate - the InputStream to delegate to
include - true to include the UTF-8 BOM or false to exclude it

Set include to false and your BOM characters will be excluded.

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Regrettably not. You'll have to identify and skip yourself. This page details what you have to watch for. Also see this SO question for more details.

---

Here is my code to read csv files in most char sets. It should cover 99% situations.

        try(InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream(csvFile);){
            BOMInputStream bomInputStream = new BOMInputStream(inputStream ,ByteOrderMark.UTF_8, ByteOrderMark.UTF_16LE, ByteOrderMark.UTF_16BE, ByteOrderMark.UTF_32LE, ByteOrderMark.UTF_32BE);
            Charset charset;
            if(!bomInputStream.hasBOM()) charset = StandardCharsets.UTF_8;
            else if(bomInputStream.hasBOM(ByteOrderMark.UTF_8)) charset = StandardCharsets.UTF_8;
            else if(bomInputStream.hasBOM(ByteOrderMark.UTF_16LE)) charset = StandardCharsets.UTF_16LE;
            else if(bomInputStream.hasBOM(ByteOrderMark.UTF_16BE)) charset = StandardCharsets.UTF_16BE;
            else { throw new Exception("The charset of the file " + csvFile + " is not supported.");}
            
            try(Reader streamReader = new InputStreamReader(bomInputStream, charset);
                BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(streamReader);) {
                for(String line; (line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null; ) {
                    String[] columns = line.split(",");
             //read csv columns
            }
        }

---

IMO none of the given answers is really satisfying. Just skipping the BOM and then read the rest of the stream in the current platform's default encoding is definitively wrong. Remember: The platform default on Unix/Linux and windows differ: former is UTF-8, later is ANSI. Such a solution only works if the rest of the stream (after the BOM) only contains 7-bit ASCII characters (which, I admit, in most programmer near files like configurations is true). But as soon there are non ASCII characters, you will fail with this approach.

That's why all java classes/methods, which can convert byte arrays/streams to string (and vice versa) have a second parameter indicating the encoding to be used (Reader, Writer, Scanner, String.getBytes(), etc.).

There are so much character encodings out in the world, not only UTF-xx. And still - in the current year 2021 - there are so much encoding problems between end user applications, especially if they run on different platforms (iOS, windows, unix). All these problems only exist because the programmer was too lazy to learn how character encoding works.

Thus, it's an absolute MUST to evaluate first the encoding to be used, and then performing the string/stream conversion using the found encoding. Consulting the respective specification(s) is the first step. And only if you cannot be sure which encoding you encounter while reading a stream you have to evaluate it by yourself. But caution: such an evaluation always will only be a 'best guess', there is no algorithm which can cover all possibilities.

In this sense, Lee's answer (and coding example) from Feb 6,2021 is IMO the best one, except that he falls back to UTF-8 if there is no BOM.

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I had the same problem, and because I wasn't reading in a bunch of files I did a simpler solution. I think my encoding was UTF-8 because when I printed out the offending character with the help of this page: Get unicode value of a character I found that it was \ufeff. I used the code System.out.println( "\\u" + Integer.toHexString(str.charAt(0) | 0x10000).substring(1) ); to print out the offending unicode value.

Once I had the offending unicode value, I replaced it in the first line of my file before I went on reading. The business logic of that section:

String str = reader.readLine().trim();
str = str.replace("\ufeff", "");

This fixed my problem. Then I was able to go on processing the file with no issue. I added on trim() just in case of leading or trailing whitespace, you can do that or not, based on what your specific needs are.

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NotePad++ is a good tool to convert UTF-8 encoding to UTF-8(BOM) encoding.

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/

UTF8BOMTester.java

public class UTF8BOMTester {

public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    File file = new File("test.txt");
    boolean same = UTF8BOMInputStream.isSameEncodingType(file);
    System.out.println(same);
    if (same) {
        UTF8BOMInputStream is = new UTF8BOMInputStream(file);
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is, "UTF-8"));
        System.out.println(br.readLine());
    }

}

static void bytesPrint(byte[] b) {
    for (byte a : b)
        System.out.printf("%x ", a);
}}

UTF8BOMInputStream.java

public class UTF8BOMInputStream extends InputStream {

byte[] SYMBLE_BOM = { (byte) 0xEF, (byte) 0xBB, (byte) 0xBF };
FileInputStream fis;
final boolean isSameEncodingType;
public UTF8BOMInputStream(File file) throws IOException {
    FileInputStream fis=new FileInputStream(file);
    byte[] symble=new byte[3];
    fis.read(symble);
    bytesPrint(symble);
    isSameEncodingType=isSameEncodingType(symble);
    if(isSameEncodingType)
        this.fis=fis;
    else
        this.fis=null;
    
}

@Override
public int read() throws IOException {
    return fis.read();
}

void bytesPrint(byte[] b) {
    for (byte a : b)
        System.out.printf("%x ", a);
}

boolean bytesCompare(byte[] a, byte[] b) {
    if (a.length != b.length)
        return false;

    for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
        if (a[i] != b[i])
            return false;
    }
    return true;
}
boolean isSameEncodingType(byte[] symble) {
    return bytesCompare(symble,SYMBLE_BOM);
}
public static boolean isSameEncodingType(File file) throws IOException {
    return (new UTF8BOMInputStream(file)).isSameEncodingType;
}